Senator Barack Obama emerged as the big winner at Thursday’s first Democratic presidential debate. It’s not so much that he scored a knockout punch, or that he was head and shoulders above any of the other candidates. In fact, it’s the opposite.

Rudy Guiliani hit it on the head with his comment that if the Democrats win in 2008, we will be running up the white flag and going over to defense in the war on terror. The prompt and ascerbic replies from the usually well mannered Democratic field of candidates shows how close to the mark his barb was.

Rudy Giuliani has raised the first cross-party issue of the 2008 election by saying that if the Democrats win, America would be forced to take the defensive in the war on terror. Clinton and Obama quickly jumped on the attack and replied that it was hitting below the belt. Point to Rudy. The Democrats, for all their strength over Iraq, are vulnerable on every other aspect of the terror issue. Their reluctance to approve the Patriot Act, their opposition to aggressive interrogation of terror suspects, and their horror at invasions of e mail and telephone privacy all type them as weaker than Giuliani or the GOP in the war on terror.

The California Assembly Judiciary Committee has just reported out legislation to force the mammoth State Pension Fund to divest from 485 companies that have been named by www.disinvestterror.com as doing business with Iran, Syria, North Korea, or Sudan.

Polls suggest that the leading attribute attracting voters to Hillary’s presidential candidacy is her “experience,” a virtue which contrasts, presumably, with the lack of it in Senator Barack Obama, her chief rival. But a close examination of her record as first lady and as New York Senator suggests that her experience is largely in the avoidance of death by scandal. Were it to be captured in a television series, it would certainly not rise to the level of “Commander In Chief” and probably not even to that of “West Wing.” It would find its televised metaphor in the reality series “Survivor.”

All the polling and analysis of the 2008 presidential primaries neatly bifurcate their consideration into partisan categories. In the Democratic primary, Clinton, Obama and Edwards face off, while in the Republican contest, the polls take measure of Giuliani, McCain, Romney and, depending on their assumptions, Gingrich and Fred Thompson. But this analysis fundamentally ignores one of the most important elements in the looming contest of 2008: the likelihood that independents and even Republicans may enter the Democratic primary to support or oppose Hillary Clinton. So polarizing is her candidacy that the migration into the Democratic primary could be enormous, even so large as to overshadow the core Democratic partisans who always vote in their party’s contests.